COLUMN: Retailers’ interest in Southwest Florida might be enough

Which is interesting, considering retailers, in general, don’t have much to be excited about these days.

There’s a level of anxiety that comes with watching legacy retail brands wither throughout the country, but many retailers are still eyeing a move to the Sarasota market as eagerly as our northern transplants do.

Our region is flush with disposable income and new homes, and even with its troubles, retail still wants a piece of it.

But not just any piece.

I sat down this week with JLL’s Justin Greider and Cushman and Wakefield’s Garrick Brown at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ major conference in Las Vegas to get a better idea of what the strings of national retail closings could mean for us on the local front. JLL, or Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., and Cushman and Wakefield are among the biggest commercial real estate brokerage firms in the world.

Sarasota has several personalities, and retailers are well aware of that.

We’re likely to get some new innovative brands, but they’re going to be heading to Sarasota’s new, more innovative district — University Town Center, Greider told me. That area at the Interstate 75 and University Parkway interchange helped pull Sarasota out from Tampa’s shadow and redefined how the industry sees our corner of the Sunshine State.

Those parking lots are full. Those retailers are booming.

Players like men’s clothier Bonobos, the Shinola watch company and outdoor lifestyle brand REI will want to set up shop in a place as fresh and new as they are.

They likely won’t be the ones pumping new life into properties along Tamiami Trail and struggling properties throughout the country, Greider said.

Landlords are scrambling to figure out what to do with the square footage left behind by players like Macy’s, Staples and Office Depot. There’s been a major push at the conference this year to backfill empty spaces with restaurants, discount stores and entertainment. And if the industry isn’t careful, history could repeat itself, Brown told me.

Before the Great Recession, the market was over-saturated with department stores. We may be heading that way with restaurants and dollar stores. The solution to this vacancy problem could be the next major upset.

No wonder there’s been anxiety at the conference this year.

But Florida’s continuing population growth could provide a buffer of sorts, Brown said.

We’ll still likely see that over-saturation, but we may be among the last to really start feeling it. The population growth could even save us from the worst of it.

But retail is going to get worse before it gets better.

We’re only in the third or fourth inning of this shopping reckoning, Brown said.

The industry is projected to lose more than 1,000 department stores in the next few years. Those kinds of changes will force redevelopment of stale, outdated shopping centers, but it’s going to take some time.

There’s no room for mediocrity in retail, Brown told me. For decades, legacy retailers cloned themselves across the country. The experience you had in Portland, Oregon, was the same you’d have in Portland, Maine.

That just doesn’t work with today’s consumers.

Retailers are excited about moving to Southwest Florida, but in today’s market, that’s only half of the challenge.